Richard Roose
Richard Roose was accused in early 1531 of poisoning members of the household of the Englishman John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, for which he was boiled to death. Nothing is known of Roose or his life outside the case; he may have been Fisher's household cook, or less likely, a friend of the cook, at Fisher's residence in Lambeth.
Roose was accused of adding a white powder to porridge given to Fisher's dining guests and servants, as well as beggars to whom the food was given as charity. Two people—a member of Fisher's household, Burnet Curwen, and a beggar, Alice Tryppyt—died. Roose claimed that he had been given the powder by a stranger and claimed it was intended to be a joke—believing he was incapacitating his fellow servants rather than killing anyone. Fisher survived the poisoning as, for an unknown reason, he fasted that day. Roose was arrested and tortured for information. King Henry VIII—who already had a morbid fear of poisoning—addressed the House of Lords on the case and was probably responsible for an act of parliament which attainted Roose and retroactively made murder by poison a treasonous offence mandating execution by boiling. Roose was boiled to death at London's Smithfield in April 1532.
Fisher was already unpopular with the King as Henry wished to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn, an act the Church forbade. Fisher was vociferous both in his defence of Catherine and attacks on Boleyn, and contemporaries rumoured that the poisoning at Lambeth could have been either her or her father's responsibility, with or without the knowledge of the King. There appears to have been at least one other attempt on Fisher's life when a cannon was fired towards his residence from the direction of the London house of Anne's father, Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire; on this occasion, no-one was hurt, but much damage was done to the roof. These two attacks, and Roose's execution, seem to have prompted Fisher to leave London before the end of the sitting parliament, to the King's advantage.
Fisher was put to death in 1535 for his opposition to the Acts of Supremacy that established the English monarch as head of the Church of England. Henry eventually broke with the Catholic Church and married Boleyn, but his new Act against Poisoning did not long outlive him, as it was repealed almost immediately by his son Edward VI. The Roose case continued to foment popular imagination and was still being cited in law into the next century. Historians often consider his execution as a watershed in the history of attainder, which traditionally acted as a corollary to common law rather than replacing it. It was a direct precursor to the treason attainders that were to underpin the Tudors'—and particularly Henry's—destruction of political and religious enemies.
Position at court
had become enamoured with one of his first wife's ladies-in-waiting since 1525, but Anne Boleyn refused to sleep with the King before marriage. As a result, Henry had been trying to persuade both the Pope and the English Church to grant him a divorce in order that he might marry Boleyn. Few of the leading churchmen of the day supported Henry, and some, such as John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, were vocal opponents of the royal plans. Fisher was not popular politically, though, and the historian J. J. Scarisbrick suggests that by 1531, Fisher could count both Henry and Boleyn—and her broader family—among his enemies.By early 1531, the Reformation Parliament—described by the historian Stanford Lehmberg as one of England's most important ever—had been sitting for over a year. It had already passed a number of small but significant acts, both against perceived social ills—such as vagabondage—and the church, for example restricting recourse to praemunire. Although various laws had sought to restrict appeal to church courts since the 14th century, this was generally on limited terms against a small number of clergy in individual cases. By 1531, however, it was being used wholesale against the English clergy, who were effectively condemned for over-ruling the King's law by possessing their own jurisdictions as well as providing the right of sanctuary. The ambassador from the Holy Roman Empire, Eustace Chapuys, wrote to his master, the Emperor Charles V, that Fisher was unpopular with the King prior to the deaths, and reported that parties unnamed but close to the King had threatened to throw Fisher and his followers into the River Thames if he continued his opposition. The historian G. W. Bernard has speculated that Fisher was deliberately intimidated, and notes that there were several suggestive incidents during these months. In January 1531, Fisher was briefly arrested for praemunire, for example, and two months later he was made physically ill at Wiltshire's boast that he could legally, and backed by scripture, disprove the theory of Papal primacy.
The suspicion at court and the passion with which Fisher defended Catherine of Aragon angered both Henry and Boleyn, who, Chapuys reported, "feared no-one in England more than Fisher, because he had always defended without respect of persons". Around this time, she advised Fisher not to attend parliament—where he was expected to condemn the King and his mistress—in case, Boleyn suggested, Fisher "caught some disease as he had before". The historian Maria Dowling classes this as a threat, albeit a veiled one. In the event, Fisher ignored her and her advice and attended parliament as intended. Attempts had been made to persuade Fisher by force of argument—the most recent had been the previous June in a disputation between Fisher and John Stokesley, Bishop of London but nothing had come of it. At least two historians believe that, as a result, Fisher's enemies became more proactive. Biographing Fisher in 2004, Richard Rex, argues that the failure of theological argument led to more proactive solutions being considered and Dowling agrees that Fisher's opponents moved towards physical force tactics.
Poisoning
Cases of deliberate, fatal poisoning were relatively rare in England, being known more by reputation than from experience. This was particularly so when compared with historically high-profile felonies such as rape and burglary, and it was considered an un-English crime. Although there was a genuine fear of poisoning among the upper classes—which led to elaborate food tasting rituals at formal feasts—food poisoning from poor hygiene or misuse of natural ingredients was far more common an occurrence than deliberate poisoning with intent.Poisonings of 18 February 1531
In the early afternoon of 18 February 1531 Fisher and guests were dining together at his episcopal London house in Lambeth Marsh, southwest of the city. A later act of parliament described the official account of events, stating thatIt is possible that Roose was a friend of Fisher's cook, rather than the cook himself. The legal historian Krista Kesselring notes that the earliest reports of the attack—including the act of parliament, but also the letters of the Spanish and Venetian ambassadors of the day—all refer to him as being the cook. Nothing is known of his life or career until the events of 1531.
A member of Fisher's household, Benett Curwen, called a gentleman, and a woman who had come to the kitchens seeking alms called Alice Tryppyt, had eaten a pottage or porridge, and became "mortally enfected", the later parliamentary report said. Fisher, who had not partaken of the dish, survived, but about 17 people were violently ill. The victims included both members of his dining party that day and the poor who regularly came to beg charity from his kitchen door. The later act of parliament, from where most detail of the crime is drawn, was unclear on the precise number of people affected by the poison. It is not known why Fisher did not eat; he may have been fasting. Fisher's first biographer, Richard Hall reports that Fisher had been studying so hard in his office that he lost his appetite and instructed his household to sup without him. His abstinence may also have been due, suggests Bernard, to Fisher's well known charitable practice of not eating before the supplicants at his door had; as a result, they played the accidental role of food tasters for the Bishop. Suspicion quickly fell upon the kitchen staff, and specifically upon Roose, whom Richard Fisher—the Bishop's brother and household steward—ordered arrested immediately. Roose, who by then seems to have escaped across London, was swiftly captured. He was questioned in the Tower of London, where he was tortured on the rack.